Regardless of whether, in your own opinion, you are a good writer, we can always improve. Here is an opportunity to polish your skills, take note of some bad habits, and hone your editing technique. -CCE

Here’s a good exercise to promote plain writing and dense writing. The object is to force you to purge your writing of any words that don’t work their butts off on your behalf. Take the following sentence and reduce it to as few words as humanly possible, without changing the meaning of the sentence. Shortest re-write wins a prize (respect)!

We’ve been talking about contract interpretation in my Contracts class lately and I’m always struck by how many cases involve a lower court ruling of ambiguity and then an appellate court reversal of that ruling, because it always strikes me as such a funny thing. The very definition of ambiguity would seem to be ‘multiple people disagreeing on the meaning of the word,’ but the appellate court decisions in those cases necessarily have to dismiss the reasonableness of the lower court’s understanding of the meaning in order to assert that the meaning is SO OBVIOUS.

Well, here’s a treat. Seven posts all in one on jury selection and jury questionnaires. How do you find the right jurors to hear and decide your case? Some people have a natural tendency to tell you whatever you want to hear. They are just trying to be helpful. Some potential jurors simply don’t want to be there, and hope to be dismissed.

You have little time to sort this out. It is time to become an expert in human psychology. –CCE

If I had to pick one trial reform that has the best chance of promoting reliable information in voir dire and in decreasing reliance on demographic biases, it would be the greater use of supplemental juror questionnaires. A well-designed questionnaire allows you to uncover the attitudes that are most relevant to bias in a given case context. Here are seven posts laying out the reasons why.

The only thing more stinging than a satisfying benchslap is the cool, crisp bite of a sly insult. The understated quip can often accomplish so much more than the breathless broadside. For example, an opinion reversing the court below that signs off with, ‘next time, we assume you’ll do your job,’ boasts more devastating heft than anything Justice Scalia served up. It’s just so cold.

I may be the luckiest person in the world. I receive emails almost daily from people I do not know who want to give me money. I’ve won the lottery or I’m offered a fantastic job as a “mystery shopper.” And, boy, do I win a lot of stuff! Of course, none of this is true.

On the flip side, the tone may be more menacing. Emails from banks and credit cards saying they need me to respond to address a delinquent account or that someone has used my account. I do not have accounts with these folks.

Even with my firewall and my attempts to avoid viruses, Trojan horses, and other attacks on my computer, bogus emails and spam walk right in. I block these emails, mark them as “junk,” and they still come. I suspect many of you get the same things.

Do not miss this one! Keith Lee gives some excellent advice, and provides a honey pot link to Justice Maria Rivera’s “The Ten Commandments of Brief Writing.” Appellate judges pull no punches when it comes to what works and what doesn’t in appellate briefs. -CCE

The New York Times ran this article today about car leases and how difficult it is to get out of them. The article discusses one auto lessee who found that she had a medical condition that prevented her from driving. When she tried to get out of her lease with Ford, she was told that there was no way that she could escape her obligations unless she joined the military or died.

LLI has shared a sense of what has interested us during this election cycle through its analytics at its legal research website. -CCE

Given all this, you might predict that statutes related to immigration, Social Security, and other issues that generate heated discussion during election season might also appear in the list, but they don’t. Perhaps that’s because they generate heated discussion all the time. But it may be that, during the most bitter election campaign in decades, substance matters less than criminalizing the behavior of your opponent.

Filed under: Law Libraries, Research Tagged: 2016 Election, Cornell University Law School, Legal Information Institute, LLI]]>https://researchingparalegal.com/2016/11/07/law-library-analytics-and-the-2016-election/feed/0celiaelwellHacks and Cyberware Are Becoming More Commonplace Than Ever. Do You Know How to Safeguard Your Firm And Home Computer?https://researchingparalegal.com/2016/11/06/hacks-and-cyberware-are-becoming-more-commonplace-than-ever-do-you-know-how-to-safeguard-your-firm-and-home-computer/
https://researchingparalegal.com/2016/11/06/hacks-and-cyberware-are-becoming-more-commonplace-than-ever-do-you-know-how-to-safeguard-your-firm-and-home-computer/#respondMon, 07 Nov 2016 04:47:40 +0000http://researchingparalegal.com/?p=4776Continue reading →]]>Seven Rules to Stay Safe Online in a Scary Digital Age, by Larry Port, Legal Productivity

If your nerves haven’t been rattled by the October 21st DNS attacks, they should have been. The hysterical tenor of the US election drowns everything out, but this news was a real doozy. Many sites, including Twitter, Spotify, and AirBnB were inaccessible due to one of the largest denial of service attack ever.

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So given the state of a possible escalating cyberwar, how is an attorney to stay safe? Start by making sure you understand and live by these basic security rules . . . .